“Well, I’m not like you,” I said. “I have more important things to think about than the way that I look.”

In one fell swoop, my mother gripped me by the hip and spun me around to strike my backside with her palm. It was not the first time my mother had hit me, but as I grew older and bigger, the punishment seemed more and more unnatural. At that point, I weighed more than her, and the strike hardly hurt, aside from the embarrassment of feeling much too old for the practice.

Hearing the commotion, my father made his way up the stairs and looked on from the hallway.

“Hit her!” my mother instructed. He stood still, watching dumbly. “Hit her!” she screamed again.

“If you hit me I’m going to call the police!”

My father grabbed me by the arm and raised his hand, but before he could bring it down, I wriggled out of his grasp, ran to the phone, and dialed 911.

My mother looked at me as if I were a worm, an unfamiliar speck eating away at all her efforts. This was not the girl who clung to her sleeves at the grocery store. This was not the girl who begged to sleep on the floor beside her bed. With the phone to my ear, I stared back at her defiantly, but when I heard a voice on the other end of the line I panicked and hung up. My mother took it as an opportunity to tackle me. She grabbed me by the forearms, and for the first time, we were locked together, wrestling to pin each other to the carpet. I tried to fight her off but discovered there was a physical place I would not go, a strength I knew I had to overtake her but could not access. I let her pin my wrists and climb on top of my stomach.

“Why are you doing this to us? After everything we have given you, how can you treat us this way?” she yelled, her tears and spit falling onto my face. She smelled like olive oil and citrus. Her hands felt soft and slick, greased with cream, as they pushed my wrists against the coarse carpet. The weight of her on me began to ache like a bruise. My father hovered over us, unsure of his place in it all, searching for a reason why a kid like me could wind up so miserable.

“I had an abortion after you because you were such a terrible child!”

Her grip went slack and she shifted her weight off me to leave the room. She let out a little cluck, the kind of sound let out when you think something is a real shame, like passing a dilapidated building with beautiful architecture.

There it was. It was almost comical how she could have withheld a secret so impressive my entire life, only to hurl it at such a moment. I knew there was no way I was truly to blame for the abortion. That she had said it just to hurt me as I had hurt her in so many monstrous configurations. More than anything, I was just shocked she had withheld something so monumental.

I envied and feared my mother’s ability to keep matters private, as every secret I tried to hold close ate away at me. She possessed a rare talent for keeping secrets, even from us. She did not need anyone. She could surprise you with how little she needed you. All those years she instructed me to save 10 percent of myself like she did, I never knew it meant she had also been keeping a part of herself from me too.

6

Dark Matter

This could be my chance, I thought, to make amends for everything. For all the burdens I’d imposed as a hyperactive child, for all the vitriol I’d spewed as a tortured teen. For hiding in department stores, throwing tantrums in public, destroying her favorite objects. For stealing the car, coming home on mushrooms, drunk driving into a ditch.

I would radiate joy and positivity and it would cure her. I would wear whatever she wanted, complete every chore without protest. I would learn to cook for her—all the things she loved to eat, and I would singlehandedly keep her from withering away. I would repay her for all the debts I’d accrued. I would be everything she ever needed. I would make her sorry for ever not wanting me to be there. I would be the perfect daughter.

* * *

—

OVER THE COURSE of the next two weeks my father was able to arrange an appointment at MD Anderson and my parents flew to Houston. With better imaging, they discovered my mother did not have pancreatic cancer but a rare form of stage IV squamous-cell carcinoma that had likely originated in the bile duct. The doctors told them if they had moved forward with the surgery the first doctor suggested, she would have bled out on the operating table. The recommended course of action now was to return home and hit it with a three-drug Molotov cocktail, then follow up with radiation if the results were positive. My mom was only fifty-six and despite the cancer, relatively healthy. They felt if they went in strong, there was a possibility she could still beat it.

Back in Eugene my mother sent me a photo of her new pixie cut. She’d had the same hairstyle for more than ten years, simple, straight, and falling just below her shoulders. Sometimes she’d wear it in a loose ponytail, often with a visor or a sun hat in the summer, a beanie or a little newsboy cap in the fall. Aside from the perm she had when she was younger, I’d never seen it styled any other way. “It suits you!” I messaged back ecstatically, following up with a number of enamored, animated emojis. “You look younger!!! Mia Farrow!!!” I meant it. In the photo she was smiling, posing in front of a white wall in the living room, near the kitchen counter where my parents kept their car keys and the landline. There was a plastic port on her chest, its edges secured with clear medical tape. She looked almost coy. Her expression was hopeful, her posture slightly bent, and it made me hopeful too.

* * *

—

IN SPITE of my mother’s initial objections, I quit my three jobs, sublet my apartment, and put the band on hiatus. My plan was to spend the summer in Eugene and return to Philadelphia in August for our two-week tour. By then I would have a better idea of what my family and I were in for, and whether or not I should move out indefinitely. In the interim, Peter would visit.

I landed in Eugene in the afternoon, the day after my mother’s first chemotherapy infusion. I’d done my best to look poised and put together, spending my layover at the San Francisco airport in front of the women’s room mirror. I washed my face in the sink and dabbed it dry with a rough paper towel. I brushed my hair and reapplied my makeup, cautiously lining my lids with the thinnest flick of a cat eye I could manage. I took the lint roller out of my carry-on and rolled the sticky paper over my jeans and picked at the pills on my sweater. I smoothed the wrinkles as best I could with the palms of my hands. I put more effort into composing myself for my mother than I had for any date or job interview.

I had prepared for our visits this way since college, when I’d return home for winter and summer breaks. In December of my freshman year, I carefully polished a pair of cowboy boots she sent me, dipping a soft cloth into the waxy paste they came with and running it over the leather, blending it in small circles with the bristles of a wooden brush.

Though my mother and I hadn’t parted on good terms, once a month, huge boxes would arrive, reminders I was never far from her mind. Sweet honey-puffed rice, twenty-four packs of individually wrapped seasoned seaweed, microwavable rice, shrimp crackers, boxes of Pepero, and cups of Shin ramen I would subsist on for weeks on end in an effort to avoid the dining hall. She sent clothing steamers, lint rollers, BB creams, packages of socks. A new “this is nice brand” skirt she’d found on sale at T. J. Maxx. The cowboy boots arrived in one of these packages after my parents had vacationed in Mexico. When I slipped them on I discovered they’d already been broken in. My mother had worn them around the house for a week, smoothing the hard edges in two pairs of socks for an hour every day, molding the flat sole with the bottom of her feet, wearing in the stiffness, breaking the tough leather to spare me all discomfort.